Posted: Fri 02 Jul 2010, 09:34 Post subject:
need a screen magnifierSubject description: need a screen magnifier which not only follows the mouse but also lets operate the controls togathe.

Hi friends.

I need a screen magnifier ( full or partial ) which not only follows the mouse but also lets us use the controls while the screen is magnified. like i should be able to to open folders, enter text fields, etc. I used qzoom for the same while using winXP. Now i am searching for a similar software for my lucid puppy 5.0.1. Can anyone help me in this regards

I have tried using virtual magnifying glass. It does nothing but just magnifies a portion of screen for reading. unfortunately i can't use any controls while the screen is magnified. like i cant even scroll down pages or enter text or click icons.

Cool. Here's the source and binary (compiled on Puppy 4.1.1 and upxed) for a tiny, antique one: puff
Read the manual, which I translated to html.

I can't quite figure out how I'm intended to run it... if I start it from a terminal, it only tracks the mouse pointer (as you say you want). But do you really want more?
If I then run `DISPLAY=:1` in a terminal, then launch programs from that terminal, it tracks the latest screen updates in these programs - e.g. it focuses on text as I type it in rxvt, and focuses on buttons that I press in xbomb, and no longer tracks the mouse. It seems to me like it should be able to track both at the same time - I'm guessing I need to do something like start puff after starting X, but before starting anything else (including the window manager?), then run the DISPLAY command. Can anybody figure this out?
Also, I can't launch some programs (abiword, gnumeric, xsoldier... ) from this window - they crash saying `X connection to :1.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).`. I wonder if they would work if puff was started differently?

Personally I'd prefer if the box around the area that is magnified was shown constantly, instead of just for a fraction of a second... maybe that's an idea for a budding hacker
I also have a feeling that things in the taskbar that update constantly (like xload) and status bars that constantly update (like in mtpaint) wouldn't play well when it is displaying screen updates rather than following the mouse pointer...

Try this. It includes a menu entry and a roxapp (with right-click menu) in /usr/local/share/apps that you can put on the desktop.
If you use the menu option to connect a program to puff it starts rxvt and connects it to puff, so you can start and connect another program by running whatever command you would normally run to start it. Also if you drop a program onto the roxapp the program should be started and connected to puff... but as I noted above lots of programs these days seem to crash if you try to connect them to puff, or they just don't connect

So you probably just want to click it and let puff follow your mouse cursor

In case anyone is bewildered: pressing number keys to change the magnification in Puff only works with the number keys in the main part of the keyboard, not on the numberpad._________________Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

I can't quite figure out how I'm intended to run it... if I start it from a terminal, it only tracks the mouse pointer (as you say you want). But do you really want more?
If I then run `DISPLAY=:1` in a terminal, then launch programs from that terminal, it tracks the latest screen updates in these programs - e.g. it focuses on text as I type it in rxvt, and focuses on buttons that I press in xbomb, and no longer tracks the mouse. It seems to me like it should be able to track both at the same time

Yes, I built and tested puff in Puppy 1.x (which has an older Xorg), and this works.

disciple wrote:

I'm guessing I need to do something like start puff after starting X, but before starting anything else (including the window manager?), then run the DISPLAY command.

No, it seems nothing like that was required.

disciple wrote:

Also, I can't launch some programs (abiword, gnumeric, xsoldier... ) from this window - they crash saying `X connection to :1.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).`. I wonder if they would work if puff was started differently?

Hmmm, I seem to recall having the same trouble starting these programs on a remote X server before... so the problem may be nothing to do with puff itself.

On Puppy 1.x I do still experience the problem that sometimes it displays the wrong part of the screen.

So... presumably as X has evolved it has slowly broken Puff, which has been unmaintained for many years. This is rather sad, as I imagine the changes required to get it working would be reasonably small... and as I can't find anything else that can track both the mouse pointer and text as you type it._________________Do you know a good gtkdialog program? Please post a link here

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